Rainfall

Pastoral Districts

Rainfall totals were mostly below average in the north-eastern area of the Far North pastoral district. Some parts of this area received less than 5 mm which is very much below the average.

Over the remaining pastoral districts rainfall totals were mainly near average for October with some locations, in the central southern areas of the pastoral districts, receiving above average rainfall amounts.

Rainfall totals were predominantly between 5 mm and 15 mm with some totals as high as 30 mm, with Nonning's total of 32.0 mm being the highest.

Agricultural Districts

Large areas of the agricultural districts received near or above average rainfall totals during October, however below average totals were recorded over much of the Lower Eyre Peninsula, Yorke Peninsula, the Upper Southeast district and the far western parts of the Eyre Peninsula. Parts of the Upper and Lower North districts recorded above average rainfall totals.

Rainfall totals of more than 50 mm were recorded over parts of the Lower Southeast, Mount Lofty Ranges and the Upper and Lower North districts. The far western coastal regions generally recorded less than 10 mm during October. Rainfall recordings in the remainder of the agricultural districts were generally in the 20 to 50 millimetre range. Forreston (Millers Creek), in the Mount Lofty Ranges, recorded the highest total of 92.6 mm.

Across the longer term, rainfall for the growing season (April to October) is generally average or above average across all of the agricultural districts.

The year to date rainfall is generally near average across most of the agricultural districts except in the Upper Murray Valley, Murray Mallee and eastern parts of the Upper Southeast districts where the rainfall is below average for the year so far. The rainfall over Far North pastoral district is below average while most of the Northwest pastoral areas have received average rainfall to the end of October.

Temperature

Looking at the October records since 1950; state-wide the monthly mean October temperature (the average of the maximum and minimum temperatures) was 0.4°C above the average for the South Australian agricultural areas. For South Australia as a whole the monthly mean October 2009 temperature is the coolest since 2003.

Maximum

The mean maximum temperatures for October over the state was mostly below average with areas in the Eyre Peninsula, Far North districts and the western and eastern fringes of the state slightly above average.

In the Pastoral districts the mean maximum temperatures ranged from 24.0°C at the Yunta Airstrip to 30.7°C at the Oodnadatta Airport. Mean maximum temperatures over the Agricultural districts ranged from 15.5°C at Mount Lofty in the Mount Lofty Ranges to 25.6°C at Wudinna.

The highest maximum recorded during October was 41.1°C at Oodnadatta Airport on the 24th. The lowest was 9.8°C at Mount Crawford on the 13th of October.

Minimum

The mean minimum temperatures in the state for October were within 1°C above or below average.

Mean minimum temperatures in the pastoral areas ranged from 8.9°C at the Gluepot Reserve to 14.9°C at the Oodnadatta Airport. Over the agricultural districts mean monthly minimum temperatures ranged from 5.2°C at Keith (Munkora) to 12.3°C on Neptune Island.

The lowest minimum temperature recorded during October was −1.9°C at Keith (Munkora) in the Upper Southeast district on the 8th. Oodnadatta Airport recorded the warmest overnight temperature with 26.5°C on the 25th of October.

Notes

This statement has been prepared based on information available at
8 am on Monday 2 November 2009.
Some checks have been made on the data, but it is possible that results will change
as new information becomes available.

Averages are long-term means based on observations from
all available years of record, which vary widely from site to site.
They are not shown for sites with less than 20 years of record, as they cannot then be calculated reliably.
The median
is sometimes more representative than the
mean
of long-term average rain.

The Rank indicates how rainfall this time compares with the climate record for the site,
based on the
decile ranking
(very low rainfall is in decile 1, low in decile 2 or 3,
average in decile 4 to 7, high in decile 8 or 9
and very high is in decile 10).
The Fraction of average shows how much rain has fallen this time as a
percentage of the long-term mean.